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Web site is
global panorama
Kailua webmaster launches
By Peter Wagner
a virtual reality album featuring
worldwide sights and sounds
Star-BulletinWEB wizard Robert "Rabbett" Abbett of Kailua has pushed his high-tech hobby up a notch with "Wrinkle 2000," his latest collection of virtual reality photographs from around the world.
Launched Feb. 1 by Wrinkleintime.org, the online album captures sights as well as sounds from as far away as Russia in scores of 360-degree "panographs" taken on New Year's Day.
Click on a site and you're standing in the noise of a London street corner with a full view in all directions. Another click and you're alone in the silence of a South African tundra.
"What we have is a wonderful crop of locations," said Abbett, a former Hawaii disc jockey who dabbles in Web pages and runs an online radio station called Internet Radio Hawaii. "We have six continents. We have Russia and Africa this time. One shot was taken off the top of a mosque in Cairo."
The project was put together with cutting-edge technology and the help of an elite group of "virtual reality panographers" around the globe.
"I told people, shoot whatever is important to you," said Abbett, who launched his first "Wrinkle" in 1997. "One person shot a panorama of his dining room table while eating dinner."
Viewers can manipulate the photos, zooming in for a closer look or panning around to see in other directions.
Abbett's newest collection of 98 entries -- gathered at a cost of about $1,000 plus weeks of hard work -- is considered a singular feat in the fast-evolving world of Internet technology."It's been a pretty big volunteer effort," said Baron Sekiya, a photographer at West Hawaii Today who took part in past "Wrinkle" projects. "It's interesting that you can see different places in the world in the same space of time."
To ease the heavy load of visitor traffic and speed downloading, Wrinkle 2000 is mirrored at five sites around the world including at Apple Computer in Cupertino, Calif., Virtual Properties in Chicago, the University of Texas at Arlington, Notion Pictures & Net and InterNLnet in the Netherlands, and the Creative Construction Crew in Germany.
"My site would be overrun without them," Abbett said. "That happened to me the first time. I didn't have sufficient bandwidth."
Earlier Wrinkles have drawn tens of thousands of visitors. The latest version in the past week has counted nearly 15,000.
Visitors will need the lastest version of Apple QuickTime to view the images, software that can be downloaded free from Abbett's site by both Mac and PC users.
Meanwhile, the 46-year-old Abbett is planning another effort next February to combine panoramic shots with three-minute QuickTime movies, yet another twist of the high-tech screw.
Why does he do it?
"It's a great way to promote camaraderie around the world," Abbett said. "I think it's the cat's meow."
97 more panoramas online
for viewing at Wrinkle In Time
